Zero-K: an excellent real-time strategy game

Zero-K 1

Zero-K is a real-time strategy game inspired by Total Annihilation, the game engine is distributed under GPL v2 and the artwork under various licenses depending on the elements, some under non-free licenses.

Not a simple clone, change the way you play they are not the same units, for example. Zero-K is based on the SpringRTS engine, which has been around for several years now and is basically a clone of Total Annihilation, but which eventually becomes a game engine and allows you to develop your own game.

About Zero-K

Unlike many other RTS and Total Annihilation, the resources are a constant stream, if you don't use it, you can lose.

There are two types of resources: metal and energy.

  • Energy can be obtained by building solar panels or wind turbines.
  • The metal must be obtained through the construction of extractor on metal mines. These mines are spread all over the map, and they are the ones that give the entire strategic dimension: we cannot be content with staying at their base, because whoever controls the metal mines wins the game.

Units

This gameor allows us to control armies of hundreds of robots of all kinds, humanoids, tanks, planes, ships, spiders, giant robots and nuclear missiles in epic battles full of explosions.

Each type of unit is grouped in a factory, and the choice of the outlet factory should be made according to the soil.

Interface

In Zero-K, the build queue is infinite (there is even a 'produce loop' button) and we can also say add this unit to the top of the queue, because I need it now.

  • In fact, there are so many small, handy features that I certainly couldn't list everything here.
  • Regarding the movement of units, there is everything: movement, attack, guard, patrol.

But above all, something that I have never seen before: if we select a group of units and draw a line with the mouse, they will go ahead on this line, we can really deploy their units in large fields.

You can also place rows of buildings in the same way.

Regarding the orders that we give to the units, we can chain them, but we can also press space to add the order to the beginning of the queue or to add it to the center of the line, automatically in the place where the unit will have to walk less to perform this task in addition.

For keyboard shortcuts, you can drop any of the game actions, and there are also keyboard shortcuts for selecting units based on their type, status and other settings. We can even write scripts to define automatic groups of units, for the customization nuts.

Terraforming

It is possible to change the height of the ground, build walls or, conversely, flatten to let vehicles pass or build ramps to climb the cliffs.
There are dozens of keyboard shortcuts to steer the slope as you like, choose the altitude according to the altitude of a terrain of your choice, follow the straight or free lines and many other things.

Zero-K

Game modes

There are the classics like the campaign mode (not very developed yet), the skirmish mode against the AI ​​and the online game against other humans, with AI or not.

A special feature: the chicken mode, where the AI ​​does not control robots, but a kind of alien race. Nests grow randomly across the map and waves of units, all more monstrous than each other, arrive in successive waves, much like a tower defense game.

How to install Zero-K on Linux?

This video game We can find it in the Steam catalog for free, we only have to have activated the support for the beta version of Steam (to be able to play Windows with Steam in Linux)

But for the case of those who are Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint or derivative users can install this game, but require the use of Wine, POL or Crossover to do so.

They must execute the following commands for this:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mono-complete libsdl2-2.0-0 libopenal1 libcurl3
mkdir Zero-K
cd Zero-K
wget https://zero-k.info/lobby/Zero-K.exe
mono Zero-K.exe


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